This post deals with something serious involving haunted attractions, bloggers, reviews, and Jason’s Woods in Lancaster, PA.

Occasionally, Haunted Attractions will offer bloggers complimentary passes to come out and review their attractions. I have clearly indicated when I have been invited to review an attraction in each of my posts. At no time do these passes influence my reviews on this site. I feel that my reviews are my opportunity to help people see their work with different eyes. I often treat it as collaborative. The goal is to give great feedback so we can all see more cool things next year.

I was very troubled when I was logged into my Twitter account and saw a some upset tweets from FightTour. FrightTour is another blog that reviews Haunted Attractions. I have never met or worked with the FrightTour crew before, but they always seemed pleasant and ethical from my vantage point on Twitter. In fact, FrightTour often contacted me to get feedback on the reviews because it meant a lot to him to do his best job.

Allegedly, FrightTour had been promised complimentary passes to review Jason’s Woods in Lancaster, PA. Here is a screenshot of the email:

What allegedly transpired after that was that they arrived at Jason’s Woods in Lancaster PA after driving about 3 hours from Tom’s River NJ, and there was some confusion leading to them basically being told that they could only have the passes if they would give Jason’s Woods a positive review. FrightTour says that he then offered to just pay for the attraction. He says he was frustrated with the coarse way he felt he was being treated. This led to an altercation that allegedly ended with Bob, the owner “[calling Frighttour] a “little fuck” and [was] told to get off the property”.

You can read the details of the alleged exchange over at FrightTour’s site.

I was not present, so I have no first hand knowledge here. I do know that I have always perceived Frighttour as an upstanding reviewer who really cares about his work. If this really happened, this brings up some serious issues when the integrity of online reviews are concerned. Are other reviewers being pressured for positive reviews here or at other haunts? How many reviews are being planted on the internet? How many customers go to haunted attractions based on planted reviews each year and decide haunts are not a return activity after being misled?

I have never met anyone involved with this situation. When I contacted Jason’s Woods for a statement about this several days ago they did not reply to my inquiries. If I do receive any comments or a statement I’ll update this post to reflect new information.